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Imagine a European country. A militarily successful one. One which, however annoying – and, oh, did it make a nuisance of itself in many varied ways – could not be ignored. One led by a self-regarding, popular leader (with a penchant for mistresses) around whom government revolved. A leader who, after a period of stasis, took action, to the delight of those around him. A leader who seemed set fair to revive the country’s fortunes.
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Err, no, I didn't.
The coronavirus proofreading exoribonuclease mediates extensive viral recombination
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.23.057786v1
... RNA recombination is required during normal CoV replication for subgenomic mRNA (sgmRNA) synthesis and generates defective viral genomes (DVGs) of unknown function. However, the determinants and patterns of CoV recombination are unknown. Here, we show that divergent β-CoVs SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, and murine hepatitis virus (MHV) perform extensive RNA recombination in culture, generating similar patterns of recombination junctions and diverse populations of DVGs and sgmRNAs. We demonstrate that the CoV proofreading nonstructural protein (nsp14) 3-to-5 exoribonuclease (nsp14-ExoN) is required for normal CoV recombination and that its genetic inactivation causes significantly decreased frequency and altered patterns of recombination in both infected cells and released virions. Thus, nsp14-ExoN is a key determinant of both high fidelity CoV replication and recombination, and thereby represents a highly-conserved and vulnerable target for virus inhibition and attenuation.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1254462206403588096
It is looking like many, many years of virology research is now being squashed into a few months. Good job, Science Guys and Gals.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1254471589896298504
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1254471745358254087
It’s certainly not in all coronaviruses: “ The b-coronavirus murine hepatitis virus (MHV) lacking nsp14-ExoN activity has significantly decreased and altered distribution of RNA recombination events..”. Like this one, they have their own different proofreading mechanisms, with different functionality.
It’s a very interesting result, but I don’t expect any therapeutic arriving particularly soon. A vaccine seems a better bet in the short term.
But being an ‘old fashioned” inactivated virus vaccine, will be relatively expensive and slow to manufacture in quantity (though many countries have the necessary plants).
https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1252940519942098944
If this particular protein is reasonably widespread in the betacoronaviruses, it also means that there should be a highish probability of more zoonotic novel coronavirus diseases emerging because of recombination events.
Most mutations (that spread) tend to be more virulent but less severe
THE SNP is so rotten it may have to be replaced by a new independence party, its former deputy leader has said
It doesn't matter what people say. There are plenty of people (usually men) who insist on going into work when not feeling well and who don't cover their mouths when coughing or blow their noses when sneezing discreetly. Instead, they insist on clearing their throats loudly right next to others. They often don't bother to wash or wipe their hands after either.
Given the high-density seating on most SWR commuter trains (and the close packing of rows) it's that which I'd be most concerned about.
Not the slightest chance of catching a virus on there.
Supermarkets are WAY more dangerous.
I don't think it's helpful to use the same words for things with wildly different probabilities eg
"there's no evidence that a vaccine will give long-lasting immunity"
"there's no evidence that injecting disinfectant is an effective treatment"
Makes it sound like there is equal uncertainty about both.
Better to say:
There is no guarantee that an effective vaccine will become available.
And
Injecting disinfectant is a stupid idea, and we're not going to waste time proving it even if asked to do so by Trump because we have to devote resources to investigating less moronic treatment possibilities.
Surely a key point (given how large, weighty, wealthy and important France is within Europe today, and a secondary leader of the EU) is that you really have to be going some to break the advantages that size, demographics, geography and the national integrity of the state give you to jeapordise your position permanently.
France also suffered many other subsequent revolutions, had its industrial north ravaged in one world war and was wholly occupied in another.
So the UK is rather likely to continue to be a successful country and a key European player in the long term.
The Chinese state have a huge vested interest in being seen to come up with the cure to a virus they know they are seen to be partly responsible for and failing to contain.
I'd want to see independent tests from a reliable 3rd party (or multiple parties corroborating the same) before I got excited.
Your first paragraph ignores the fact I was talking about post-lockdown, not now.
Your second paragraph is demonstrably untrue and your third simply an assertion.
So the rest of the world is ahead of WHO ... and the UK (obvs).
I am struck by how little the rest of Europe, with the exception of Ireland, cares about what a Brexit Britain does. That certainly wasn't the case with Louis XIV
And Airbus has big problems and lay offs are certain across Europe
Indeed I do know quite a bit about Airbus in the UK but am not willing to go further just yet
Watching that happen to the Environment Agency in Oxford was instructive.
RNLIB is currently working it's way towards that.
And this is why we cannot be tied to EU state aid and tax regulations policed by the ECJ
It is simply not acceptable
Just not this one.
No political agenda there then
But it was an enjoyable read.
If we need to maintain social distancing and want to start reopening stuff, how do we do so when a personal 2m space simply isn't physically possible? Mrs RP is doing lunchtime shifts at the primary school where she's been doing her TA placement. Like so many schools they are not even getting in vulnerable kids who are supposed to be there (Lord alone knows what is happening to those poor kids). The few that do come in can't be kept apart - you can't get upset 5 year olds to stay away from their friends and the staff. And the classrooms will fit 30 kids but its snug - no option to space them out other than removing 2/3rds of them. If social distancing is required for at least the rest of 2020 then we have a major problem in education.
Thats just one key sector. There are a lot of other sectors key or less key where the same problem presents itself, and there is no solution. To put it in context spoke to my dad yesterday and he was describing how the doctors think he contracted polio from the swimming baths when he was 4, how it infected him and not his brother who was there at the same time, how he remembers 6 months in hospital in stark white tiled rooms with literally no visitors when he was most infectious. His point to me was that awful as it was for him both at the time and with the life-limiting disability it left him with, the virus was out there and society got on with it because it didn't have a choice. He was born in 1947, his dad was REME / Polar Bears / Paras and his mum's first husband went down with his bomber. A deadly virus was just another life hazard.
I'll stop now. I've read a couple of things over the last few days talking about how the decades up to 2020 were almost uniquely free of deadly bugs and may in hindsight be seen as the aberration not the norm. Is CV19 the 2020 version of Polio and if so at which point do we just accept it?
The expulsion of the Huguenots did not help France either. The last years of the Sun King’s reign were a bit sad for him and his country. Of course France continued to be an important European player but what struck me was how another relatively minor - by contrast - country was able to take advantage of its neighbour’s mistakes.
Hard to say now - but could or would have anyone predicted how Britain would come to outshine its neighbour relatively quickly during the glory years of Louis XIV? And yet very quickly it did.
France’s slow decline started then and as a result of Louis XIV’s hubris. It repeatedly tried to recover its Gloire - with mixed success for itself and its neighbours.
Over the weekend I heard from a local GP who is furious about the political attacks on HMG who feels it is doing a very good job in an impossible situation
If he had intervened in the manner that the Guardian are insinuating, we would certainly know about it.
But if this is really an attempt to draw a parallel between Brexit and 17th-18th century France it's not very convincing.